Skittlette from the Vault

Hello!  It feels slightly strange to be writing a post again, since I haven't blogged since January.  I didn't stop for any other reason than that I found it wasn't really compatible with my work schedule.  Being a professional ballet dancer in a company that does lots of performing has been amazing, but unfortunately I've got to wear nude polish when I'm onstage, which is quite frequently.  I'm not sure if I'll get back into blogging regularly, but I've got quite a few photos piled up in folders that never got posted, so I'd at least like to get those shared.  Beyond that, I have still been doing my nails frequently, so I may pop up from time to time with new stuff.  

There have been some other major changes with me, the main thing being that I'm now living in England as an Irish citizen.  Once I finished the season with the ballet company in Toronto, I moved to London and have been here with my family since May.  I will be starting with a ballet company north of London in just over a week now, which I'm very excited for!  

Anyways, I know you're all just here for the nails (if any of you are still left after my unplanned hiatus!) so here's something I hauled from the vaults.  This was from a week-long stint at the end of January where I went oval before filing them down to nubs again. 

The polishes used here are LaCC 1973 (purple), LaCC 2005 (white), LaCC 2002 (black), and A England She Walks In Beauty.  The houndstooth pattern is from BM-322.  

So I *guess* if I get back to posting enough, I'll be one of the group of English nail bloggers now?  Anyway, I know my performance schedule this coming year will be absolutely crazy, as we're touring all year and doing about 130 performances all over the UK.  But I'll work on clearing out the vaults for now, and beyond that maybe find time for the occasional post once in a while.

Thanks to all of you who've stuck around! :)

Subtle Gradient & Houndstooth

I'm finally back home!!  I ended up blogging far less than I was hoping to be able to while away this past month, but I was still doing my nails so I've got quite a few posts backed up.  I've also got some awesome polishes to swatch, which I'm working on right now, so expect to see those on the blog soon too! 

At the ballet school I've been at for the past month (and where I'm going full-time next year) we're not "*technically* allowed to wear nail polish.  But, being the rebel polish-addict that I am, I did anyways.  For the most part I tried to keep my manis light and subtle, and I have one of them to show you today.  

I started with a gradient of Essie Waltz and piCture pOlish Fairy Floss; I really liked the clean and simple look of this gradient and wore it plain like this for a day! 

The next day I wanted to spice it up a bit, so I stamped the houndstooth pattern from BM-322 using Essie No Place Like Chrome.  It's all topped off with a coat of LaCC 2013 top coat. 

Although having to do manis using only lightly-coloured polishes was an interesting challenge this month, the first thing I did at home this morning was put on a dark vampy polish!!  How do you like this subtle look?  :)

Mint Manis for Talia Joy

I had planned to show you the last of the beautiful Shimmer swatches this morning, but instead I've decided to join in on Nail Polish Wars' fantastic idea to post mint manis in honour of Talia Joy Castellano.  Talia was an extremely talented 13-year-old makeup artist and YouTuber, who was battling two kinds of cancer (neuroblastoma and preleukemia) since she was diagnosed at only 7 years old.  Despite all this, she still managed to keep upbeat, motivated, and overwhelmingly positive.  She passed away on Tuesday morning, and since her last Instagram photo was of a mint manicure, we have all joined together to do mint manis in honour of Talia.  

I pulled out what has become one of my favourite summer cremes, piCture pOlish Honey Dew.  I added a double-accent nail with BM-322 and Essie Good As Gold, and put a gold square stud (which I found in a clearance bin at the drugstore) on all the other nails.  It's all topped off with two coats of Poshé top coat. 

I really love the combination of the bright minty green with the gold, there's something very classy but modern  and stylish about it.  In other news, I'm getting used to the round nails and they're growing on me a bit.  I'll still go back to squares though once I have enough length at the sides.  

You can share your mint manis for Talia on Facebook, Tumblr, Instagram, etc. with the hashtags #MintManisforTalia and #TaliasLegacy.  You can also add your mani to the Inlinkz collection below.  I'm excited to see what everyone else has come up with in honour of this beautiful girl.  Keep Talia's family and friends in your prayers! <3

The Inlinkz for this event is after the jump, since there have been over 200 entries!  Click below to have a look. 

Happy Easter!

I really wanted to do some awesome Easter nail art, but time just got away from me with swatching last night.  I did this yesterday afternoon before all that got going, so I guess this is technically cheating since it isn't actually the mani I'll be wearing for Easter.  However, it is awfully cute, so I decided to share anyways!  :)

I haven't stamped in a really long time so, looking for some quick nail art, I grabbed BM-302 with the spring and Easter patterns on it.  I was really happy with my Bundle Monster plates from Nail Polish Canada, but this is the only image in the whole set that came scratched.  Grrr. 

I already had LaCC 1992 on my nails, because I had a ballet photoshoot earlier in the day and needed a neutral look.  (Creep my IG for those photos soon!  Link in the sidebar.--> )  I stamped the design from BM-302 with Konad special pink polish, and topped it off with some Seche Vite.   

The mani that I'm actually wearing today is LaCC 1977 topped with Different Dimension Social Suicide, because it matches the dress I wore to Church this morning!  I'll post photos of that somewhere, at some point.  Maybe.  Hopefully.  

I would say that I'm looking forward to spending the rest of the day with family, but truth is that we'll probably all be off doing our own things around the house (swatching for me) until soon before dinner.  I am really looking forward to dinner tonight though, my mom makes such good food for holidays!  

Anyone else have any exciting plans or familiar traditions for today?  Whatever you're doing, make it a great day!  :)

Silver Snowflakes

Another Christmas-y manicure today!  Christmas is less than a week away (*gasp*) and time for Christmas nails is is running out, so let's get right to it!  :)

I started with two coats of OPI The Spy Who Loved Me and one coat of Seche Vite to speed up the drying before stamping the snowflake design from BM-323 with Essie No Place Like Chrome.  I finished the look by placing silver holographic glequins from the Born Pretty Store in the centers of the larger snowflakes, and applying one last coat of Seche Vite

. 

OPI The Spy  Who Loved Me is a gorgeous bright red with a goldish-red glass fleck/shimmer.  It applied so perfectly, and is a great holiday polish! 

I really liked this look and was planning on wearing it for two days, but I got a huge dump of indie nail mail the next day, so off it came!  :P  

Christmas seems to have come so quickly this year, and I'm going to try to get in as much Christmas nail art as I can!  I'm still stuck on what polish to wear on Christmas, but I'm not really sure how much it matters since I'm pretty sure I'll be getting some polish for Christmas and will probably do my nails multiple times that day anyways, haha!  

Have you decided what your Christmas manicure will be?  A favourite polish or nail art?  :)

Secret Santa

**I've entered my Christmas meme nail art in Week 2 of Nail Polish Canada's Holiday Nail Art Challenge.  Don't forget to vote here! Voting ends Wednesday, December 5th.**

Time for another Castle Mani Monday!  This week's episode is called "Secret Santa" and is the first Castle Christmas episode ever, so needless to say I'm super excited!  :)

I got the idea for this mani from one of the episode stills that was released; see Castle's shirt?  

I used my first DS OPI polish for the first time, DS Mystery.  It's a stunning deep brown-ish purple with gold micro-flakies, and an amazing almost-one-coat formula.  LOVE!  Artsy sideways photo, anyone? 

I stamped an image from BM-321 with Essie Good As Gold (probably my favourite stamping polish) and topped with one coat of Seche Vite.  The stamp doesn't really match his shirt as well as the paisley BM pattern would have, but I wanted to try an image that I hadn't used yet and I really liked this one.  

Yesterday I spent a good deal of time trying to figure out how to use Photoshop Elements to do my colour-correcting, and I think I'm starting to get the hang of it.  Though I still need to find the exact skin tone that's as white as I am without making me look like a ghost! 

Unfortunately there's not going to be another Castle Mani Monday post for 5 weeks due to the show's winter hiatus, so look for a new one in January! What do you think of today's installment?  Will you be watching Castle and Beckett's first Christmas tonight too?  :)

Quilted Chatters

Today I've got a beautiful polish to show you, once again thanks to my awesome friend Michaela.  I've had my eye on OPI Chatters Me Up for quite a while, and when I was at her house the other day (Halloween cookie-baking and nail-painting party) she kindly let me borrow her bottle.  I am now absolutely sure that I need my own bottle of this!  :)

Chatters Me Up is an OPI shade exclusive to Chatters salons in Canada, as far as I know.  It's a wine-coloured polish with a strong pink shimmer that's almost micro-flakies, and it flashes an orangey-bronze in the sunlight.  This is such a complex polish, and unfortunately it was impossible to capture it in all it's glory in pictures, so you'll have to take my word for it! 

I used plate BM-310 and Essie Good As Gold to stamp on this image, the finished look reminds me of a royal quilt, haha!

Chatters Me Up had a great formula, and covered completely in two easy coats.  Doesn't hurt that I love the shape of OPI's brush, it fits my nails perfectly! 

I'm really happy with how this turned out,  I'm actually still wearing it and going on day 3! 

Tomorrow is Halloween, and I have managed to make it to this point without doing a single Halloween manicure!  Remember this post when I was complaining about the likelihood of me spending Halloween at home alone?  Well I've decided to tag along with a group of my friends and we're going to collect food donations instead of getting candy!  I've also finally thought up an awesome costume (my activity on Sunday, haha)  and I will be doing my nails for tomorrow, but they'll be part of my costume and won't resemble anything Halloween-y.  I haven't told anybody (besides my family) what I'm being, and I'm super excited to dress up!  If I get a decent picture, I'll post it here along with my matching nails!  :)

Wishing everyone a safe and happy Halloween, and my thoughts and prayers are with everyone on the east coast!  

Snow Leopard

I have this awesome friend named Michaela, and she's probably the most crafty and creative person I'll ever have the pleasure of knowing.  She likes doing her nails too and we often talk nail polish, so I was super excited when she decided to get the Bundle Monster 2011 stamping plates.  I have the 2012 set, so last week we got together and borrowed some of each other's plates!

One of the plates I borrowed was BM-221, specially for this leopard print pattern.  I had just recently done a leopard-print mani and wanted this one to look different, so I used my newly-acquired OPI My Boyfriend Scales Walls (LOVE) and stamped with Konad black polish. 

My Boyfriend Scales Walls is seriously the most perfect white ever.  For all intents and purposes it serves as a white polish, but it's heaps more flattering than most which look like white-out.  It also wears really well, these pictures were taken after three days of wear and I only had one small chip on my right hand!  

Last weekend we got the first dump of snow on the mountains, so these nails felt appropriate.  I'm really happy with how they turned out, and wouldn't be surprised if I re-created them a couple more times before winter is over!  Also, don't forget to like the new Globe & Nail Facebook page!

What do you think of this?  Do you like this different winter leopard print look?  :)

Lighting Strikes Violet Femme

I feel like I haven't posted in so long!  Reality is that I had a couple of manis that I wore for three days, and I was having a crisis of sorts with my pictures (more on that at the bottom of the post.)  

Today's mani is my first venture into mildly Halloween-y nails.  I'm not at all excited for Halloween this year; I used to get excited about dressing up and going trick-or-treating with my friends (and the candy-eating that followed) but this year my mom has finally pulled the plug on that one and isn't letting me go, saying that I'm too old.  (16 isn't too old as long as you're dressed up, right?)  Since I do school online and am not at all the type to go to crazy parties,  I'll most likely be spending the night at home watching re-runs of all the Castle Halloween episodes alone.  

Mildly depressing rant over, here is my somewhat Halloween-y mani.  I don't care for the standard orange and black combination, so I went instead for silver and purple.  Close enough, right?  I started this mani with a base of Picture Polish Violet Femme, which in my opinion is the most perfect shade of purple polish ever.  Purple is my favourite colour, but I don't have many purple polishes because I'm so picky about exactly which shades I like; this one hits the spot!  It's deep and rich, and super saturated with an almost-neon purple pigment that is oh-so-perfect.  Two coats, and a stamp with BM-305 using Essie No Place Like Chrome, and this is the result.  

What do you think of the rotated picture? 

So, the picture crisis:  I used to take my pictures outside on the deck in the morning before I left for school and dance, but now the annual torrential downpour has started and is unlikely to let up at all until March.  That, plus the fact that it's not very light out by the time I leave in the morning, and I'm a little panicky as to what to do about my photos.  I made a lightbox and played around with it a lot, but I still can't get anything close to what  I want my photos to look like.  I'll play with that, and hope that I can get something to work!

How do you like my Halloween-ish mani, or do you even think it says Halloween at all?  Hate to be a party pooper but is anyone else as not-excited for Halloween as I am?  

Simple Elegance

Just a quick stamping post today using another one of my new Bundle Monster plates.  I had a performance on Friday night, and of course my nails couldn't go naked so I wore 4 coats of OPI Barre My Soul.  

By the time I got home it was pretty late so I decided to just add some stamping on top of what I was already wearing.  I used BM-314 and Konad Black polish to stamp on this design.  I'm kind of bummed that I smeared the image a little when I put on top coat, but it wasn't visible at all from arm's length. 

This is actually something I've had in the back of my mind since I saw this image on the Bundle Monster plates, and I'm glad that I finally got around to doing it.  

I really enjoyed wearing this (especially with my matching black lacey leotard to class and rehearsal the next day.)  I think it has a kind of simple understated elegance to it.  How do you like the neutral background with black stamping?  Is this something you'd wear? 

Exotic Encounters of the Lacquered Kind

Now that we're past that awesome post title, I just got my first polish from the China Glaze on Safari Collection (I'm a little behind, I know.)  China Glaze isn't easily available to me, but occasionally I'll walk into Winners and find a ridiculous amount of China Glaze and OPI on sale for half-price, and they're usually the more recent collections!  

Of the China Glaze they had, Exotic Encounters was the only one that I knew I needed.  Had my mom not been watching my every move (she knows it's dangerous when I find nail polish on sale) I probably would have walked out with the entire collection plus a couple OPIs. 

I decided to stamp over two easy coats of Exotic Encounters with an animal print pattern from BM-313 and Essie Good As Gold.   The colour choices ended up looking slightly turtle-ish to me, but I really like it!

Also, I'd like to let you know that I entered one of my manicures in a contest to win the entire Zoya Gloss Collection at Fab Fatale.  Zoya isn't easily available to me where I live, and I'd really appreciate if you could help me.  It only takes a minute to go here and click the "Vote" button underneath the manicure you see at the end of the post. (Essie Merino Cool and BM-315)

All the help is much appreciated, and I promise if I win I'll have a ton of awesome jelly sandwiches to share with you!  Have a good day! 

After The Storm

Shut the front door!  It's finally here!  I've been waiting for this day for four months.  Four maddening, challenging, frustrating months.  If you're a fellow Caskett shipper, you'll understand my major freak-outs and random outbursts of excitement today.  Just in case (God forbid) you don't watch Castle, this is the premise of the show.  Seriously, if we thought the end of Season 4 exploded the internet, just wait until tonight.  I'm sure the entire fandom will be lying in pieces on the floor being all like "TOO MANY FEEEELS!"  

Yes, I'm crazy.  Anyways, down to business.  This manicure, in honor of the Castle Season 5 Premiere episode tonight, was inspired by this manicure by Colores de Carol.  I used Zoya Dove and BM-303 and BM-311 with Konad black polish.  Unofrtunately none of my limited amount of red polish worked well for stamping, so black lips will have to do. 

I saw the inspiration for this manicure when she originally did the post a while ago and had it filed away for this day.  It's so perfect for Castle and Beckett, especially considering where they are now.  ;)  

I'm considering doing a series of Monday Castle-inspired nail art posts for next few weeks, so keep an eye out for those because I've got a couple more ideas floating around in my head that'll hopefully make it to my nails. You can see my Castle Season 4 Finale mani here.  Feed the birds! 

I'm so glad that it's finally September 24th.  You seriously have no idea.  But if you do, please leave a comment so I know who you are and we can fangirl together.  

Mod Teddy Girl

The nicest thing happened the other day!  A lady at my mom's office brought in  bunch of nail polish and put it out in the break room for people to take, saying that she'd never use them again.  My mom took a couple bottles and emailed her to explain how much I'd appreciate them and thank her, to which she told my mom to just take all of them!  I arrived home to 4 bottles of OPI, 2 Revlons, one Essie, and a Butter London!  And all the bottles are practically brand new! 

The Butter London I received is a gorgeous light pink called Teddy Girl, it looks to be very close to a couple other light pinks I have, (OPI Mod About You, Essie Fiji, Essie French Affair.)  Let me know if you'd be interested in a comparison post!  

The formula on Teddy Girl was really easy to work with, though it did require three coats to be completely opaque.  I stamped over it with BM-322 and Konad black polish, and then added dots with Essie No Place Like Chrome. 

I know my stamping leaves a little to be desired in spots, but when it's not blown up to five times the size of my actual nail, it's very visually striking.  

This doesn't really fit in with my usual aesthetic, but I really like it!  I'll definitely have to wear Teddy Girl again by itself soon, it's such a soft pretty colour that's really flattering on my skin tone.  

How do you like what I did with Teddy Girl?  Would you like to see a comparison post with my other similar light pinks?  Leave a comment, they make me happy!  :)

Nacozari & Stamping

Hey!  Just a quick post tonight showing you a mani I did with Sassy Lacquer Nacozari, which I won in a giveaway a couple of months ago and hadn't yet gotten around to using! 

Nacozari is a beautiful light blue-leaning-green, though my photos make it look really blue.  It has a very subtle copper-y shimmer in it which only comes out in direct sunlight, but when it does it's stunning!

Formula was a little streaky, but workable.  This is three coats with two coats of Seche Vite.  I stamped on the birds with Konad white polish and BM-315. 

What do you think of this? Are you a fan of subtle stamping accents?